Archive for the ‘Org spotlight’ Category

The Alliance of Tribal Coalitions to End Violence is an umbrella nonprofit organization representing Tribal Coalitions working to end sexual and domestic violence against Native people. ATCEV was formed by Tribal Coalition leaders to deliver a unified voice against violence. Together, the Alliance seeks to strengthen ties and to share knowledge and resources between member coalitions. ATCEV supports and strengthens coalitions through sharing resources including policies, training curricula, outreach strategies and nonprofit development and sustainability. Collectively, ATCEV’s Coalition leaders have over 150 years of experience in victim services and Tribal nonprofit management.

The Alliance of Tribal Coalitions to End Violence currently consists of eighteen member coalitions across the country. These coalitions are:

Casa Ruby is the only grassroots multicultural LGBT center that provides bilingual services for DC’s Latino community members. Focusing on Latina transgender women and immigrants, Casa Ruby addresses the needs of some of the most vulnerable members of DC’s LGBT community. As many LGBT organizations focus their work on lesbians, gays and bisexuals, the specific needs of the transgender community often fall by the wayside. Casa Ruby is a unique organization as it is a particularly welcoming space for transgender and other gender nonconforming people. At Casa Ruby, intersectionality is key. The organization is attuned to the intersection of factors including sexuality, gender identity, ethnicity, legal and socioeconomic status that lead to varying degrees of marginalization .

Casa Ruby was founded as a DC nonprofit in 2004 by Ruby Jade Corado. Ruby, a Salvadoran transgender woman, fled civil war in El Salvador and came to DC at the age of 16. She has spent the last two decades advocating tirelessly for “LGBT human rights, transgender liberation, immigration equality, access to health care, hate crimes/violence [prevention] and many other disparities and issues facing the community that she represents.” (Who Is Ruby?)

Casa Ruby provides a variety of services at their Columbia Heights drop in center. These include hot meals, clothing exchange, access to a cyber center, support groups, case management, emergency housing referrals, and criminal/immigration legal services counseling. Additionally, Casa Ruby runs comprehensive career and employment services such as education and training, job placement, career development and risk remediation. Each week about 150 community members come to Casa Ruby.

Founded in 2002, My Life My Choice is an organization fighting against the commercial sexual exploitation of young people in the greater Boston area. Led and fueled by survivors, My Life My Choice’s unique model empowers youth through engagement with a powerful community of advocates who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation personally. Envisioning a world free from the buying and selling of children, the organization works in four main survivor-led arenas:

Survivor mentorship

Prevention education

Professional training for service providers

Advocacy and leadership

In the greater Boston area alone, MLMC has trained 7000+ youth providers, mentored over 300 girls, and trained more than 7000 youth service providers. MLMC’s services for youth are inclusive, comprehensive and gender inclusive as of 2014. Last year, they launched a pilot mentorship program for 12-18 year old boys and transgender youth. MLMC encourages young survivors to stay engaged with the organization through the MLMC Leadership Corps, fueling the next generation of powerful survivor advocates. The organization has been recognized by the US Department of Justice as a national model for sex trafficking prevention.

My Life My Choice is a member of the Justice Resource Institute and partners closely with other local and national change-makers including the SEEN Coalition (Support to End Exploitation Now) and the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Anti Trafficking Taskforce. In 2011, MLMC was a key voice in the drafting of Massachusetts anti-trafficking legislation that assured that exploited minors specialized survives rather than jail time.

The Association for the Development and Enhancement of Women (ADEW) originally got its start when a group of development professionals launched a micro-finance project for garbage collectors in Zaballeen in the 1980s. During the projects implementation, the developers decided they should expand the project to help marginalized groups in Cairo. They identified low-income women of female-headed households as the vulnerable group they would target. This initial development work turned into ADEW in 1987 when the group of twenty men and women decided to register the Association with the Ministry of Social Affairs as a private, voluntary, non-governmental organization.

Today, ADEW still runs credit programs but now it also offers literacy programs, health services, and legal awareness seminars. Some of ADEW’s achievements include being the first Egyptian nongovernmental organization to identify female heads of households as a target group and the first to establish a micro credit program using a group lending methodology. They were also the first to address the problem of lack of official documentation and work on solving this problem.

ADEW’s mission is to create suitable conditions for Egyptian women on both personal and societal levels. They seek to change the culture of the community and women’s image in society, while also changing laws and policies. Their vision is then to give women, especially female heads of households, their legal, economic, social, political, and cultural rights in order to become full citizens and decision-makers within the family. Through equality with men they hope to give women the same opportunities in order for women to gain the ability to make their own choices.

Established in 1986, as a national, non-profit, non-governmental organization under the Societies’ Registration Act 1860, Aurat Publication and Information Service Foundation (Aurat Foundation/AF) is committed to create widespread awareness and commitment for a just, democratic and caring society in Pakistan, where women and men are recognised as equals, with the right to lead their lives with self-respect and dignity. Over the last 28 years, Aurat Foundation has come to be recognised nationally and internationally as one of the leading institutions creating, facilitating and strengthening civil society groups and networks for promoting trust and collaboration among citizens to mobilize public pressure for women’s empowerment in the country.

Aurat Foundation has its Head Office in Islamabad, and five regional offices in the provincial capitals in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar ,Quetta and Gilgit, and 37 Field Offices. Further, it has a countrywide network of voluntary citizens’ groups and individual activists in 128 districts in the country. These groups include Citizens Action Committees (CACs), Resource Groups and Aurat Foundation Resource Centres (AF-RCs) and Information Network Centres (INCs).

The Foundation has also emerged as a major support institution for civil society organisations working for social change at the community level.

The goals of the Foundation are to:

To enable women to acquire great access to knowledge, resources and institutions;

To influence attitudes and behavior for a social environment responsive to women’s concerns and people-centred issues;

To facilitate citizens’ active participation in the process of social change and governance at all level.

The Fiji Women’s Rights Movement

The Fiji Women’s Rights Movement (FWRM) was founded in 1986. In 2001, FWRM drafted a constitution and registered it under relevant Fiji legislation. The multiethnic and multicultural FWRM’s purpose is to “work toward the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, promote the equality of women, and support democracy and human rights in all areas of life in Fiji and the Pacific Island region”.

FWRM is a non-governmental organization that works through institutional reforms and attitudinal changes in order to remove discrimination against women. FWRM promotes feminism, democracy, the rule of law, good governance, and human rights, while striving for ways to provide leadership opportunities for women in Fiji.

To promote equal access to services by women and equal opportunity through appropriate enabling actions

To ensure the Movement remains a well managed and sustainable organization, giving leadership opportunities to women, networking and sharing experiences with others in the Pacific, regionally and internationally

In 2011, FWRM released Herstory: Celebrating 25 Years of Balancing the Scales, a chronicle of the most significant moments of the Movement’s history. Herstory begins with by describing how a group of 56 women gathered to discuss how change could be made in order to combat the patriarchy. Milestones, such as the Family Law Act of 2003, illustrate the continued perseverance that the organization displays in order to see action taken. The report ends with quotations from those who believe in the Movement.

FWRM looks forward to their next quarter century of operation. They believe in their continued ability to make a difference, because of their past ability to make positive progress during coups and even despite being persecuted by the military.

La Asociación de Mujeres Organizadas de Biolley (ASOMOBI), translated as Organized Women’s Association of Biolley, was founded in 1997 by a group of women from the community of Biolley, Costa Rica. The founders had a shared desire to fight to improve the lives of families in the community and surrounding towns. ASOMOBI receives financial and technical support from national and international donors who believe in the capacity and leadership of the group.

In an attempt to extend benefits to families, roasting coffee is grown by families and husbands. ASOMOBI also focuses on rural tourism around coffee and other attractions in the area, including development projects centered on ecotourism.

ASOMOBI’s objectives are to build capacity for their members, strengthen rural community tourism, establish conditions for sustainability in operations for ASOMOBI coffee, promote conservation measures, and strengthen the administrative and operational capacity of the organization.

They operate under the mission:

“We are a group of women organized community Biolley we seek to improve the quality of life for our families and the natural and social environment through the sale of products and services and working with the forces of the community.”

Currently ASOMOBI is working to rebuild operations after a fire in 2012, which destroyed Posada Rural Cerro Biolley, leading reduced operational capacity for ASOMOBI specifically and decreased tourism, and increased unemployment for the entire community.

The “Information Center of the Independent Women’s Forum” (ICIWF) is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation registered in 1994. In the beginning, the goals of the organisation were: support of regional women’s initiatives; development of educational programs for women; development of the information exchange between women’s organisations and the institutionalization of the women’s movement. However, during the last few years new aims were added, such as the inclusion of women in the development of local self-governance; development of local communities, partnership on the territories and engendering municipal and local policies.

Today, one of the main aims of the ICIWF is organising its activities as a new social institution for empowering women and developing the women’s movement.

One of the strategic directions of the ICIWF’s activities for the last few years has been the development of partnership between social activists from different social movements in order to strengthen their understanding of the fact that reaching gender equality is one of the most important aims in forming the Russia’s civil society.

In order to reach these aims the ICIWF has developed four interrelated programs:

innovative approaches to empowering women in frame of feminist practice

1 Million Women is an Australia based organization that focuses on what women can do to fight climate change. Founded by Natalie Isaacs in 2009, 1 Million Women is based on the concept that since women do the majority of household purchasing, women can have a huge impact on energy consumption and waste creation. The organization focuses on the wasteful lifestyles of richer countries, and believes that it is these countries that must take ownership to combat environmental degradations.

1 Million Women focuses on many areas that affect the environment. They advocate for the reduction of consumption, increased recycling, and finding alternative methods to high energy-use activities (i.e. using public transportation over driving a car to get everywhere). In every instance, they use a million women tag, such as, “if a million women cut household electricity by 20%, we can make 2 coal-fired power stations redundant”. They advocate large change that only requires small actions. If enough people act, even minor changes will make a big difference.

The 1 Million Women site covers climate change news from around the world, and it offers everyday examples of how to reduce your own carbon footprint. 1 Million Women is an organization that combines women’s collaboration and empowerment with simple ways to get involved and fight climate change.

SOC Films is a Karachi based film house specializing in investigative and socially motivated content. With Academy and Emmy award winning journalist and documentary filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy at its helm, SOC Films seeks to set a new standard for groundbreaking cinema that furthers the art of fiction and non-fiction story telling in Pakistan.

From following the lives of child suicide bombers, to bringing to light the plight of Iraqi refugees, Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy’s efforts to highlight the voices of marginalized communities will be echoed and furthered in the work of SOC Films which will continue to produce content that breaks boundaries and challenges audiences. Two such films that SOC Films produced are Humaira: The Game Changer and Humaira: The Dream Catcher. These two films celebrate the achievements of Humaira Bachal, an activist fighting for girls’ education in Pakistan.

Through the induction of its Karachi office, SOC Films intends to groom a new generation of directors, producers and writers who will be equipped with the skills and training to produce quality films for both Pakistani and international audiences.

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